


She Says the Bleeding's Incidental

by Lady_Vibeke



Series: Cara Dune & Din Djarin: Tales of Two Space Idiots in Love [11]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Adults Trying to Adult, Awkward Conversations, Banter, F/M, Family Feels, Idiots in Love, Pining, So Married, Teasing, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unspoken Love, soft idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:40:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23950222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Vibeke/pseuds/Lady_Vibeke
Summary: "Sir, your wife is bleeding."Din nearly choked."She'swhat?"He spun toward Cara, who had moved a couple of feet up the stall, and noticed a red stain the size of a fist soaking the side her shirt.Cara didn't even have the time to glance down at herself before Din pushed her back to sit on a crate nearby. He moved her arm up and started feeling around the spot with tentative, delicate touches, frowning when Cara hissed in pain."You know,” she said with a little smirk quickly replacing her grimace. “I believe the appropriate response to that should have been 'Mywhat?'..."
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune, Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: Cara Dune & Din Djarin: Tales of Two Space Idiots in Love [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709416
Comments: 14
Kudos: 215





	She Says the Bleeding's Incidental

**Author's Note:**

> This whole fic was inspired by the opening quote.
> 
> Title from Milk by The 1975.

> _There are two reasons why people don’t talk about things: either it doesn’t mean anything to them, or it means everything._
> 
> — Luna Adriana

***

They shouldn't have come here.

Din couldn't stop thinking about how bringing Cara and the child to this place had been a mistake, but now it was too late to reconsider the plans.

The Dantoo Town Square Market was not particularly vast, but so dense in stalls and goods it was hard not to get distracted. _'Nobody leaves the market without a good deal in their pocket',_ the locals said.

Both Cara and the kid seemed very determined to live up to the infamous saying as they gingerly strolled among the plentiful stalls, Din in tow, following in silence as the two of them took their time to check out the products.

They were supposed to be here solely for food supplies, but the kid was attracted by everything shiny or colourful, and Cara had already picked up and sighed longingly at at least a dozen knives.

“Ponder your choice well, buddy,” she was whispering to the child, who currently had his eye on a red and purple fruit the size of his own head. “We only get to buy one thing, otherwise Daddy will scold us both.”

She turned back to send Din a defiant grin. Din shook his head at her, but it only made her grin wider.

They were wasting time lazying around. Din, however, couldn't bring himself to ruin the fun for them: all of them had had a rough couple of days in Galactic City during a hunt and both Din and Cara had got out of it a bit bruised and battered. Nothing a lot of bacta and a lot of dressings couldn't fix. Still, they all needed some relaxation after that.

It was a warm, sunny day. Cara was going to get a sunburn from this: her cheeks and nose were already red, a sprinkle of minuscule freckles surfacing slowly but steadily under the stubborn sunlight. The child was snuggled against her chest in a makeshift sling, a wet cloth – Cara's idea – protecting his head from the heat.

The thoughtfulness of the gesture had made Din's heart flutter in a way it had never done before. It hadn't helped that Cara had smiled so tenderly while placing the wet cloth upon the kid's head.

“You two can't be trusted to roam a market alone,” he said, appearing behind them at the fruit stall. “Especially our little pilferer.”

Cara poked her elbow back against his chest.

“Don't say that! He doesn't have the perception of property.” She fondly scratched the child's chin with a finger. “We're learning, aren't we?”

Din sighed, glad that he had a whole armour to conceal the flush spreading in his body as Cara's smile grew warmer.

He was starting to feel like he couldn't keep quiet any longer about this. There was something going on, here: he, Cara, the kid... something was shifting between the three of them, drawing them closer and closer every day, three solitary planets that had been pulled into the same orbit, a system of their own.

"Sir, your wife is bleeding."

Din nearly choked.

"She's _what?"_

He spun toward Cara, who had moved a couple of feet up the stall, and noticed a red stain the size of a fist soaking the side her shirt.

Cara didn't even have the time to glance down at herself before Din pushed her back to sit on a crate nearby. He moved her arm up and started feeling around the spot with tentative, delicate touches, frowning when Cara hissed in pain.

"You know,” she said with a little smirk quickly replacing her grimace. “I believe the appropriate response to that should have been 'My _what?'..."_

Oh.

Right.

Din hadn't even realised-

He chased the alien word out of his mind – _wife_ – and tried to concentrate on the actual and more pressing problem.

"Forgive me for focusing on the mention of _bleeding,"_ he argued, though he was trying a bit too hard to ignore the fact that his pulse had sped up.

"I'm just saying,” said Cara with an eye roll. “ _I_ would have picked that up if someone had told me my _husband_ was bleeding."

"Can you keep your big mouth shut for a moment while I check your wound?"

It was already a hard enough task without removing her shirt, he didn't need her teasing as a further distraction, right now. At least it looked like the bleeding was minor. Din should have know it wouldn't be enough to just wrap it up. He was deciding if it was worth to risk changing the dressing in this dirty, dusty environment when, somehow, he felt a smirk pull at Cara's lips one moment before he heard her say:

"While you're down on one knee-"

 _"Don't,"_ he warned, ears burning. This was _not_ a safe conversation to have while he had his hands on her. Or _ever._

Cara leant back on the crate, propping herself on one hand, the other arm wrapped around the kid, who was scrupulously following Din's inspection.

"Why not? At least people would stop _mistaking_ us for a married couple."

The fruit vendor sniggered behind his stall.

"If you two don't wanna be mistaken for a married couple, don't act like one.”

“Thank you for your valuable and unsolicited opinion, perfect stranger,” glared Cara with a smile terrifying enough to make the man blush and mind his own business.

“You need stitches,” Din declared, carefully pulling Cara back to her feet. “It's never going to heal if we leave it like this."

"It's under control, we'll sew it up back on the Crest."

Din sighed again. Sewing up wounds wasn't the answer: _fewer_ wounds was the answer, but he didn't expect Cara to get his point of view. She enjoyed fighting too much, he would never ask her something as outrageous as being more careful; he just wished she picked her battles more wisely: seeing her get hurt in his place wasn't sure he wasn't particularly fond of. He wasn't fond of her getting hurt to protect the child, either, but that was completely different and didn't make him feel so angry and guilty.

"You're making us run out of thread,” he groaned as they resumed their walk. He couldn't stop checking the bloodstain in Cara's side to make sure it wasn't getting any larger, and in the meantime suddenly saw why the fruit vendor had said he and Cara acted like a married couple: the intimacy they'd developed was, under almost every aspect, comparable to a marriage: they'd grown accustomed to each other's quirks and peeves, habits and preferences, and after over one year neither of them could remember what had originally been his and what had been hers. That didn't matter any more; all they had now was only _theirs._ The only thing they didn't share was a bed, though it had happened once or twice that they had held each other through the night, with or without the excuse of a fever or an injury. There would come a time when they would finally open up about this and squeeze a name and a reason out of that, but for now they seemed to be content with their silent looks and surreptitious longing.

"I'm touched by your concern for my wellbeing,” Cara was pouting. “I took this wound for you, you know?"

Din exhaled a muffled groan. He really didn't need her to remind him about it.

"Yes, and I wish you stopped doing that."

"It was either your neck or my ribs,” huffed Cara matter-of-factly, then turned to make a face at him. “Will we ever stop arguing about this?”

“Will you ever stop doing it?” he retorted affably. It wasn't truly a question, because they both knew she wouldn't.

“What am I supposed to do? Just stand there and watch when you're about to get killed?”

“If it means you getting killed in my place, yes.”

“In your dreams, buddy,” Cara laughed. There was a strange glint in her eyes as she met Din's through his visor. “Your amazing wife will never tire of bleeding for you.”

It struck him like a blow to the stomach, and it struck him hard, because he knew it was true. There was something she should know, though: this thing didn't go one way.

“Then she shouldn't ask her husband not to worry about her.”

Cara halted. The kid looked up at her in confusion; he was chewing wistfully onto one corner of the cloth on his head. Cara turned to Din with her whole body, cheeks beautifully painted red by the sun. She grabbed his wrist as he walked by, forced him to yield.

“Hey.” she tugged gently to make him face her. Despite the faint smile lingering on her lips, she was deadly serious now. “I know you worry,” she said, with a hint of apology. “I'm sorry if it sounded like I didn't care.”

Din found himself paralysed. He had been bewitched by Cara's strength and her courage, but, at the end of the day, it was her hidden softness that could unawarely bring him down to his knees.

“I know you do,” he replied. His fingers closed around her wrist; seemingly instinctually, hers gripped him tighter. “Sometimes I just think you care too much.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Something changed in Cara's eyes: the smile faded away, the glint darkened.

“I get it,” she said, stuttering a little. “I- I didn't mean to make things awkward between us when I said-” She leg go of him, letting her arm drop to her side as she looked away. “I'm such an idiot.”

“Nothing's awkward,” he said hastily. He could almost sense the twitch of tension in her muscles, the feral urge to run away.

Cara glanced at him with a grin that was almost sheepish.

“No?”

This was why they didn't talk about _it:_ neither of them could afford a misstep, and they were both too emotionally clumsy to trust themselves not to make any. All they had was this lingering, this stalling they constantly lived in, a delicate balance of awareness and obliviousness. If nothing changed, nothing could go wrong.

“This is... not something I was planning to discuss.”

Cara tried to break the tension with a poor attempt to act nonchalant.

“As I said, I don't want things between us to get awkward. It was a stupid joke, anyway.”

But Din grabbed her wrist again to hold her back when she tried to walk away.

“No, it wasn't.” He wished she could see the hesitant smile he was trying to offer to her. “I'm just not ready to talk about this, yet.”

He felt nervous, because this was a half admission and they had never got as far as this before, not even as a joke.

“It's okay,” Cara said, shrugging lightly “We don't have to-”

“I think we do.”

They stared at each other again, this time with more intent. It wasn't the optimal place to _not_ talk about _things,_ with people hurrying and vendors calling all around them.

Din tugged Cara closer until they were face to face. His voice carried a smile when he whispered:

“We've joked about it long enough, haven't we?”

A reflection of his smile lit up Cara's features. She bit her lip, shyly gazed up at him.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“I just need a little longer to come to terms with the idea of a drastic shift in my... perspectives.”

Cara let out a giggle. “That is the lamest euphemism I've ever heard for- Sorry,” she mumbled, somehow perceiving the glare he was sending her way. The giggle feel silent but didn't leave her eyes.

They resumed walking in comfortable silence, both wearing matching subtle grins that made Din feel quite smug with himself. If this was how _not_ talking about _things_ made them feel, he had a good feeling about what the future had in store.

“You and this little guy made me vulnerable,” he muttered, bringing out an honesty that surprised him more than it seemed to surprise Cara. “It's a lot to take in for someone like me.”

Cara playfully arched her eyebrows at him. “A Mandalorian?”

“One who hasn't loved anyone in decades.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Din saw the dimples appearing in Cara's cheeks before the actual chuckle did.

“Didn't you just technically admit-” she started, but his scowl was effective enough to reach through his helmet and discourage her from finishing. “I'll shut up.”

Very helpfully, the kid tried to stick his wet cloth into her mouth, peeking in Din's direction for approval. Din laughed at Cara's laughter, and the child burst out into a happy giggle, too.

They finished their purchases and returned to the Razor Crest with an impressive amount of unnecessary goods, including a beautiful dagger Cara had admired for a while before eventually deciding 'she didn't like it that much' and that Din had impulsively bought behind her back as soon as she was distracted by another stall across the street.

They were about to get into the ship when Cara, biting a corner of her lip, stopped and, with one foot on the ramp, said:

“I have my own baggage of fears, you know?”

Her hands were splayed of the slumbering kid's back, thumbs stroking him absently.

Din stopped at her side. It was strange to hear Cara Dune talking about things as mundane as fears. She was human, though wasn't she? Even if it was hard to remember, sometimes. She wasn't above fears and doubts, just like anyone else, and being reminded of this was incredibly reassuing for Din.

“How do you cope with them?” he asked.

“I don't,” said Cara like it was obvious. “I'm just... afraid. There's nothing wrong about being afraid.”

“I'm a Mandalorian. I'm not supposed to be afraid,” he objected, but his tone betrayed an uncertainty he hadn't meant to convey. He didn't know where it came from.

Cara nudged him with her hip.

“I thought you guys were supposed to be brave?”

“That's the point, isn't it?”

“Buddy,” she laughed. “You can't be brave if you have no fear to overcome. _That_ is kinda the point.”

Din opened his mouth to reply, but he found his brain empty. There was nothing he could use against such a flawless logic: fear was what made the difference between brave and reckless. And if _he_ was afraid, and _she_ was afraid... maybe they could confront these fears together. Maybe it would be _easier,_ together...

Cara stepped onto the ramp.

“Take your time,” she said, turning back for a moment to make sure he could see her reassuring smile. “I'll be right here when you're ready."

Arms full of supplies and head buzzing with thoughts, Din stood there, watching her disappear into the belly of the ship. It was terrifying that everything that mattered to him fit in such a little space: it felt like the old Crest wasn't large and sturdy enough to contain two things of such paramount importance – just a woman and a child, carrying all the beauty of the universe in their eyes.

Din followed them into the ship, for the first time aware of how much this simple gesture felt like going home, small and humble as it was. They didn't have much, the three of them, but the little they had was full of happiness, because they had each other.

And maybe he and Cara weren't ready to take the big step yet, but they had made a small step, and that was good enough, for now. There had been an acknowledgement, an implicit promise, and Din was glad Cara was braver than he was for breaking their long-lasting code of silence.

Din grinned to himself as he closed the ramp thinking that the locals were absolutely right about one thing: _'Nobody leaves the market without a good deal in their pocket.'_

**Author's Note:**

> I had the very unwise idea of following a quotes blog on Tumblr and guess what? Ideas are flying. If life allows me a pause from the insanity, another quote-inspired oneshot is coming soon.
> 
> I feel like I'm always writing the same things over and over but my lack of ability to commit to serious plots won't allow me to indulge in more intricate stories. Sorry about that.
> 
> Let me know what you think? Grazie! :)


End file.
